By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, May 22 -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Offsets Group has acquired Enron Corp.'s stake in Dolphin Energy Ltd. (DEL), a natural gas project off Qatar, OPEC's news agency reported Tuesday.
UAE Offsets Group owns 75.5% of Dolphin with the exit of Enron, Houston. TotalFinaElf SA of France holds the other 24.5%. Enron had held 24.5% interest.
Terms of the deal were not released. No comment was immediately available from Enron in Houston.
DEL Chairman Ahmed Ali al-Sayegh told a news conference in Abu Dhabi that his company was looking for other companies to take a stake in the project, adding seven companies have expressed interest.
Richard Bergsieker, Enron's Middle East managing director, told the news conference Enron did not believe it could add much to the project.
"As the project had evolved into a strong upstream gas supply project and gas transport and delivery, we don't believe there is a lot of value that Enron can add," Bergsieker said. "Enron is frankly not an upstream company."
Kicked off in March 1999 by the government-sponsored UAE Offsets Group, the Dolphin gas initiative involves development of upstream facilities to produce gas from North field off Qatar, transportation infrastructure linked to a gas gathering and processing plant at Ras Laffan, and a 350-km subsea pipeline to Taweelah in Abu Dhabi and Jebel Ali in Dubai.
DEL is issuing prequalification invitations in a tender offer for major engineering and construction management contracts (OGJ Online, May 16, 2001).
The tender offer follows the signing in March of a $4 billion deal by Qatar Petroleum and the UAE Offsets Group that outlined terms for transport of up to 2 bcfd to Abu Dhabi and Dubai starting as early as 2003.